‘Making a Murderer': Steven Avery’s Lawyer Claims a ‘Mass’ of Potential New Evidence

Dean Strang might once again represent Steven Avery in court — and he says there’s a “mass” of potential new evidence to consider if he does so.

Strang — one of the defense attorneys featured in the infuriating and fascinating Netflix documentary series “Making a Murderer” — told TheWrap on Friday that it’s possible he could take up Avery’s case in a new trial, and that he and fellow defense attorney Jerry Buting have “remained informally involved in working for Steven since his appeals process was completed.” While it’s ultimately up to Avery whether Strang and Buting represent him in a bid for a new trial, Strang said that there’s a vast trove of new material to explore.

Should he formally represent Avery again, Strang said, “I’d be focused on possible newly discovered evidence. And that, at the moment, will require sifting through and ranking by priority the leads, ideas [and] possibilities that have arrived in a mass from emails and calls since the film came out.”

The material includes leads and ideas on scientific advances, Strang said. “And then factual leads, theories — whether any of it turns out to be evidence in the useful sense of supporting a new trial, that just remains to be seen. But the attention to the film has produced a lot of potentially helpful information.”

For those who’ve watched “Making a Murderer” — about Wisconsin resident Avery, who spent 18 years in prison for a rape that he didn’t commit, only to be convicted of murder under suspicious circumstances just a few years after his exoneration — there were plenty of enraging questions. (“How could they not have found the key the first half-dozen times they were in the room?”) For Strang, a particularly frustrating event in the case was a March 2006 press conference, during which the prosecutor offered a lurid and graphic scenario depicting Teresa Halbach in Avery’s bedroom, spread-eagle, manacled and begging for her life as she was raped and stabbed. According to Strang, the evidence “utterly disproved” that account. While the rape charge was dropped from Avery’s case, meaning that account was never heard by his jury, by that point the damage had been done.

“That was very, very difficult to accept as being consistent with a fair trial or a presumption of innocence where anybody who had a radio or TV in Wisconsin was exposed repeatedly to that lurid story for 10 months prior to the beginning of Steven Avery’s trial,” Strang said.

Strang concedes that there are “lots of things” that he could have done differently as well. One that still particularly sticks with him: the FBI’s testing of blood smears found in Halbach’s car for the presence of EDTA, a chemical used to preserve blood samples. Strang had theorized that authorities planted the blood in Halbach’s car from a vial of Avery’s blood extracted during his wrongful first conviction. Had the blood tested positively for EDTA, it would have served as evidence that it came from the previously drawn sample. But the FBI found no EDTA. The testing process took mere days, rather than the weeks or months that Strang was told it would take. The bombshell, which fell deep into the trial, caught Avery’s defense flat-footed.

“I should have anticipated that,” Strang lamented. “And of course mid-trial, there was no way we could do independent testing, or do much of anything in the middle of trial to react to that.”

During his conversation with TheWrap, Strang also took issue with Avery prosecutor Ken Kratz’s assertion that key evidence was left out of “Making a Murderer.” Strang picked apart a list of nine points suggesting Avery’s guilt that Kratz emailed to TheWrap earlier this week. A past incident during which Avery burned a cat, as well as an account that Avery talked about building a torture chamber, were excluded from Avery’s trial by the judge, Strang said.

Similarly, Strang said, Halbach — a photographer for Auto Trader — didn’t say that she would never return to Avery’s residence after he once greeted her at his property in a towel, as Kratz asserted.

“There’s certainly a good deal of omission from Mr. Kratz’s nine points as well,” Strang said. “If the criticism [of ‘Making a Murderer’] is omission, then the nine-point list includes some pretty significant omissions too.”

'Making a Murderer': Where Are They Now? (Photos)

Ken Kratz: The Avery case prosecutor says he has overcome an addiction to prescription pain pills since the trial and gone through the public humiliation of a sexting scandal. He maintains his license and now serves as a defense attorney.

Netflix

Mike Halbach: The brother of murder victim Teresa Halbach has served as a Halbach family spokesperson is now the director of Football Technology for the Green Bay Packers.

Green Bay Packers

Sgt. Andrew Colburn is now Lt. Andrew Colburn. He holds the title in the Detective Division of the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Office.

Netflix

Gregory Allen: Allen, who was found to have committed the rape for which Steven Avery spent 18 years behind bars, is serving a 60-year prison sentence for a 1995 sexual assault. He's up for parole in October 2016.

Netflix

Sheriff Tom Kocourek: Kocourek retired from his post in 2001. He was named as a defendant in a $36 million federal lawsuit brought forward by Avery.

Netflix

Angenette Levy: Levy, a journalist who garnered a lot of "Making A Murderer" playback attention for asking the tough questions, is now an on-air reporter for WKRC in Cincinnati.

Netflix

Aaron Keller: Levy, another reporter, is now an English/Communications professor at NHTI, Concord’s Community College in New Hampshire.

Netflix

Dean Strang: Strang recently said that he occasionally speaks with Avery, his former client. The defense attorney is not shying away from the spotlight, and recently took part in a Facebook Q&A. The trial lawyer is a partner at Strang Bradley LLC in Madison.

Strang Bradley LLC

Denis Vogel: The ex-DA is now an attorney at Wheeler, Van Sickle and Anderson, S.C., where he concentrates on commercial litigation, with a focus on matters involving utilities, electricity use and distribution, and cellular telecommunications.

Brendan Dassey: On August 12, 2016, a federal judge overturned his 2007 conviction for first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault, and mutilation of a corpse. Avery's nephew had been sentenced to Avery's nephew sentenced to life with no parole for 41 years for Halbach's murder.

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Sheriff Ken Peterson: Peterson retired as Manitowoc County sheriff in 2007, just two years after he now-famously told a TV station it would have been "a whole lot easier to eliminate [Avery] than it would to frame him."

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Barb Tadych: Brendan's mom has publicly kept a low profile since all the "Making a Murderer" hype began. Tadych appears to remain in the area, as her most recent social media check-in was at a Center for Diagnostic Imaging in Appleton, Wis.

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Sandy Greenman: It appears that Avery and Greenman are still an item. Per what appears to be her Facebook page, Greenman visited Avery in prison as recently as Monday.

Bustle

James Lenk: Lenk has managed to keep one of the lowest profiles of the entire "Making A Murderer" gang. It is unclear whether has a Netflix subscription.

Netflix

Jodi Stachowski: Steven's ex-fiancee has had some legal troubles. In April 2007, she was found guilty of using worthless checks. She was arrested three times in 2009. Since then, Stachowski has stayed out of major criminal trouble.

Bustle

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Brendan Dassey’s murder conviction was overturned, but what happened to everyone else featured in the Netflix docu-series?